If There's A Light At The End (It's Just The Sun In Your Eyes)
by DreamofInception
Summary: He's the one to find her, seven months after the world ends.


_I'm back for a short one-shot on Bellamy and Clarke over the years of an alien invasion._

 _Please tell me what you think, xo._

* * *

 **If There's A Light At The End (It's Just The Sun In Your Eyes)**

i.

He's the one to find her, seven months after the world ends.

She's cold, her fingers and toes nearly known to her existence as she huddles herself against the corner. The walls surrounding her are coated with frost, and she forgets what warmth tastes like, forgets how it feels on her skin.

Her father warned her of this, told her to be careful when surviving the winter, but she couldn't hear him past the blood sputtering from his mouth.

She held her father in her arms, and she remembers that moment, remembers the way his flesh opened with every breath he took. How his chest heaved with his final grasp for life. So she held him in his arms, telling him that he couldn't die, that he can't leave her in a world full of monsters and people becoming monsters.

"Clarke." His voice was so hoarse and rotten with death. "Survive somehow."

But she wasn't surviving, she's dying in a corner of an abandoned house, or at least she was.

Until he found her.

There was a cracking at the front door, and a low rumble as it was kicked in. She saw men in uniform, men with weapons and technology, with elements that only the Others were capable of. She clenched further into the corner, afraid to look into the face of death.

"Sir, we have an active civilian in the house." There was the crackling of a radio, and a response she couldn't hear. "Understood, Sir."

There was a call for a medical team, and an eruption of foot steps that sounded throughout the house. She blinked, because she should be dead by now, the Others would have put a bullet into her head the moment they saw her.

But then she see's a mess of curls and brown eyes, and she finally feels it, finally remembers the warmth.

She's heard the stories, the rumours her father spoke of when he was alive. How there was a military camp hidden in the state, how they hunted down the Others, how they brought humans in. She never believed it, and her father told her to never expect a salvation in a war the humans cannot win.

But here it was, here _he_ was.

He approaches her, placing his flashlight and handgun on the bedside table. His hair is tucked under his green helmet, a set of military glasses shielding his gaze. He kneels in front of her, and she notices his freckles, notices the youth of his features.

"Are you hurt?" His voice is rough as he inspects the blood on her hands. "The medics are coming."

Clarke shakes her head. "It's not mine."

He looks at her, and he's not much older than her, maybe nineteen. He removes the jacket from his shoulders and lays it on top of her, rubbing her hands between his. The friction creates a sense of security, and she breathes heavily.

"It doesn't matter," he tells her. "We're going to get you out of here."

Clarke frowns. Out of where? She doesn't even know what city she's in. Doesn't know anything except starvation and exhaustion. But then the boy notices her confusion, notices her fear, and he offers her a small smile.

"What's your name?"

She swallows thickly. "Clarke."

"Clarke." He nods, removing his glasses. "How old are you, Clarke?"

"I'm sixteen."

He raises his eyebrows, his grin widening beneath the bruise on his chin. He tightens his gloves around her hands, pressing them deeper into the warm material. She whimpers as the frost begins to melt from her fingertips.

"Sixteen. You're brave, huh?" He rubs her shoulders, her arms, and she hears the rush of the medical unit approaching them. "I'm Bellamy, and we're going to help you, okay? You're safe now."

She stares at him. _Safe_. She hasn't heard that word, hasn't spoken it, hasn't felt it in months. There's a flashing of light as more people surround her, and Bellamy nods with her, gripping her shoulders and pulling her to her feet.

A woman in white places her on the stretcher and feels her forehead.

"Lucky girl," she says, voice smooth and clean. "We got you right on time."

* * *

ii.

Clarke wakes up in a white room one week later, her body stiff and her head pounding.

She remembers a cold house and a dying fire that she wasn't able to start. She remembers the frost on the walls, the pain that electrified her body when the boy offered her heat. She wiggles her toes, threads her fingers, reassuring that they are still there, still attached.

There's a tug on her arm, and she looks down to see a needle pumping into her skin.

"Clarke." The nurse that laid her on the stretcher hovers above her. "I'm glad you're awake."

Clarke looks at her. Her face is kind, her skin a delicate porcelain against the white surroundings. She feels damaged beneath her gaze, the bruises on her body still visible despite the treatment.

"What happened?"

The nurse smiles. "I know you may be afraid, but I won't hurt you, I promise." She sits on the edge of her bed, her porcelain skin matching the paleness of the sheets. "My name is Maya. We found you during a routine search party, you seemed to be suffering from hypothermia."

She swallows thickly. "Hypothermia?"

"Yes, and a severe fever," she tells her. "We almost thought we lost you on our way here."

Clarke breathes heavily. She remembers the boy and his curls, the way his eyes melted into brown depths. She remembers his glasses, his helmet, remembers the stretcher. She remembers everything except where she is, or why.

Where is she?

"Maya," she says, almost afraid to speak her name, "where am I?"

They call it the Ark, that's what she tells her.

A military camp hidden within the woods of Washington, the largest safe zone throughout a ten mile was built by a group of men two months before the invasion began, and was taken under the control of the government once it send out soldiers each week to recruit humans, collect supplies, and murder any Others they encounter.

It's a chance in a war the humans are bound to lose, a chance to survive.

There are cabins, women and children, and even a source of clean water and operating technology. A technology that keeps the walls around them wired with electricity, that helps detect the disguise of human faces possessed by the Others.

"That's how we knew you were human," Maya tells her, tapping Sergeant Kane's combat glasses. "Human hosts appear green, the Others hosts appear red."

"But you won't be able to join our army until you're nineteen," Sergeant Kane explains. "That's a government requirement."

Clarke nods, wanting to understand. But she's scared and alone and can barely keep up. There are so many rules, so many laws to follow despite the collapse of the country. Her ears rang for three more days, trying to get used to the sound of society.

After another week in the medical unit, she was provided a cabin with Bellamy's sister, Octavia.

She was nice, and kind. It reminded her of home.

But home didn't exist anymore, and neither did she.

* * *

iii.

"You'll like it here," Octavia tells her five days later in the shelter of their cabin.

Clarke sits on their battered couch in the living room, her elbows resting on her knees as she stares out the window. She winces at Octavia's voice, the sound startling her, and she shifts uncomfortably on the cushion.

Octavia sighs. "I know you're scared. I was scared too when I first came here."

Clarke looks at her, eyes wide. She's seen the way Octavia interacted with the community, has seen her smile and laugh and hope. It's rare to make that transformation from fear. Fear almost rules out every other emotion a person has felt.

"You were?" she asks, voice small.

"Yeah." Octavia sits on the opposite end of the couch. "We just lost our mom when Kane found us. The Others, they look just like us. When I was his gun, I thought he was one of them, that he was going to kill us."

Clarke swallows thickly. "But he didn't."

"No, he didn't," she murmurs. "But in that moment, I was hoping he would."

Clarke blinks, nodding. She gets it. She knows what defeat looks like, what it feels like and smells like. If it was an Other that found her instead of Bellamy, she would have welcomed the press of a gun against her skull. She would have greeted her death with open arms.

Octavia leans forward, resting her hand on Clarke's bony knee. "You're not alone anymore," she whispers.

No. She wasn't. But this realization still made every waking day a challenge. It still made the world feel broken.

Still made her feel broken.

* * *

iv.

She wakes up screaming one night, voice raw with terror.

There's an image of her father's lifeless eyes, the reminder of death and suffering a constant pain in her thoughts. She see's red then, and darkness, so much darkness it almost suffocates her, fingers clawing -

"Clarke!" Hands grip her wrist, pinning them to her sides. " _Clarke_."

She cries out, the whispers of comfort fading into the distance. She feels herself being pulled forward, her back arching as she sits upright on the mattress. The hands on her wrist squeeze her tightly, and she hears his voice again, hears the desperation.

Clarke opens her eyes, seeing curly hair in the darkness of her room.

Bellamy.

She releases a shuddering breath, sobbing. " _Bell_."

He looks tired, too exhausted and mature for a nineteen-year-old. He's dressed in his army uniform, and she realizes he must have returned from one of his missions, his skin bruised with cuts and scrapes.

He reaches forward, grabbing her face between his hands. Calming her, in the way she doesn't deserve, in the way he's been doing since he found her all those months ago.

"It's alright," he soothes, brushing his fingers against the tears on her cheeks. "You're okay."

She shakes her head. _It's not alright_. She's seen too much, done horrible things to good people. And to survive. Survive for what? To be defeated in a war the humans will never win? She grips Bellamy's arms, she needs him to understand.

"I'm not," she whimpers, her voice shaking. "You shouldn't have brought me here. It wasn't worth it."

Bellamy stares at her. "Clarke."

And then she see's him again, her father, see's the gun in her hand as the bullet fires into his left side. The image of blood returns to her vision, and her fingers dig deeper into Bellamy's skin.

"I'm sorry. He wasn't supposed to be standing there. I'm sorry."

She repeats the words, over and over, until her tongue feels numb between the clatter of her teeth. She's tired, so tired. She misses home, misses the way the world used to be, misses her father.

Bellamy shifts closer to her on the mattress. "Hey. _Hey._ " He looks at her, trapping her with his piercing gaze. "Whatever happened, I forgive you. Okay? You're forgiven."

And that's when she breaks. _Really_ breaks.

Clarke squeezes her eyes shut, the pressure of tears building beneath her lids. She feels her lips quiver, feels the cries escaping, and she leans forward, collapsing onto Bellamy and pushing her face into the crook of his neck.

He wraps his arms around her, murmuring nothing, just words and promises she knows he can't keep.

 _Forgiveness. Forgive. Forgiving. Forget. Forget, forget, forget . . ._

Clarke presses closer against him, and then the image of her father remains in her mind.

* * *

v.

She tries to adapt, despite everything.

She's been at the Ark for eleven months, the walls around the camp still as high as the ones around herself. She meets people, talks to them, tries to remember their names and their favourite colours.

Bellamy's favourite is green. She remembers because nobody else's favourite was green.

Sometimes it scares her, hearing various voices, _real_ voices rather than the silence she was accustomed to while surviving alone. But Maya tells her that it's normal to suffer from these reactions, that it doesn't make her any less capable of healing.

"If you want something to do during the day," Maya sighs, tapping on her chin, "then I have an idea."

So she suggests for Clarke to volunteer at the medical unit, and that's what she did.

She spends most of her daytime hours there, watching Maya remove old bandages from patients and provide them with new ones. She teaches her the basics of various procedures, and Clarke learns eagerly, occasionally sewing the stitches onto wounded soldiers returning from missions.

Bellamy comes to the medical unit one night, and countless nights after that.

He has a large gash across his forehead, explaining that an Other sliced him during combat. Clarke leans forward and threads a needle through his skin, her fingers spanning across the bruised area.

"Not bad," he tells her.

She blushes, nodding towards Maya. "I have a good teacher."

And she is a good teacher, even in topics other than medicine. Maya teaches her how to grow gardens, how to cook, how to read books and phrases past her last level of curriculum.

She shows her how to sew clothes, and Clarke manages to make a blouse that Octavia has been dreaming about since she saw it in the ripped pages of an old magazine.

Octavia hugged her tightly when she saw it, so tightly that it made Clarke smile for the first time since arriving at the Ark.

And it was small. So small that she hadn't even realized it until Bellamy pointed it out to her.

* * *

vi.

Maya becomes a combat medic after Finn Collins is killed during a routine mission.

She doesn't know much about what happened, but Bellamy told her that she wouldn't want to hear it anyways. That it wasn't anything worth repeating or remembering.

"But you remember," she reminded him.

He only shook his head, trying to convince her it didn't affect him.

She's sitting on one of the trauma beds in the medical unit when he enters the white room a couple weeks later. He's dressed in his military uniform, stains of blood fading from his shirt.

Clarke smiles. "Hey."

"Hey." He looks at Maya, eyebrows raised. "You ready?"

Maya sighs, lifting herself from the ground. She pulls her backpack over her shoulders, piles of medicine bottles and textbooks hanging loosely from the open zipper.

Her lip twitches, and she nods. "Ready."

Clarke chews on her bottom lip. She hates this part. Maya has been on multiple missions with Bellamy since Collins died, and each time both of them came back. But there's always this fear, this complete _terror,_ that one time one - or neither - of them will come home.

Bellamy notices her concerned expression, sighing deeply. "Why don't you go back to the cabin? Octavia's waiting for you."

She nods, and then the sound of static appears from the radio at his side. She hears Kane's voice on the other end, urging him to round up the troops. She turns to Maya and opens her mouth, about to speak, when Bellamy smiles.

"Don't worry," he soothes, glancing at Maya. "I'll take care of her."

Clarke releases a long breath. "Yeah."

Bellamy briefly presses his palm against the side of her face before stepping back, gesturing towards Maya. She hugs Clarke quickly, wrapping her arms around her waist and promising her to bring home another book.

Maya leaves, and Bellamy is halfway out of the room when she calls his name.

He turns to her, eyebrows raised.

She doesn't know what overcomes her, whether it's the patience in his gaze or the softness of his features; but looking at him like that, twenty-years-old and dressed for war, freezes her heart. She runs to him, surging onto him and locking her arms around his neck.

She feels him hesitate, surprised, and then he holds her gently in his embrace.

Clarke swallows thickly. "Take care of yourself, too."

The static of the radio echoes again, and Bellamy sighs, setting her onto the ground. Kane's orders continue through the speakers, and she can see the reflection of his gun on his belt as he steps towards the door.

"Will do."

* * *

vii.

He does come home that night, and when he does, his and Maya's arms are filled with clear bottles.

Clarke learns that it's alcohol, something called _vodka_ , and the first time she tries it, her throat burns with the substance. She gags, shaking her head as Octavia laughs, as Bellamy takes the bottle back from her.

"Why do people drink this stuff?" she asks.

Octavia shrugs. "Makes them have a good time, I think."

So Clarke keeps drinking, even when the sun lowers behind the wall and their cabin becomes settled in the darkness. She releases a long sigh after finishing her bottle, and her head feels dizzy, and so do her hands.

Maya only smiles, and she's the one who holds her hair back when she throws up that night.

* * *

viii.

She doesn't have the familiar feeling of blood on her hands until that coming winter.

She's eighteen, the white nurses outfit held tightly around her grown body. She sits on a stool by her desk, her legs crossed as she turns the page of a book Maya gave her after finding it on a mission. The chill from outside enters the medical building when the doors open, a gust of wind and the smell of gun powder filling the white rooms.

She sighs heavily when she hears him curse.

"Blake." She places her book down. "This better be good."

She turns to him, and all she remembers is his brown eyes and an overwhelming amount of crimson.

 _Fuck_.

Clarke rushes towards him, ignoring his protests as she guides him to the closest bed. She pushes him onto the mattress, her hands prying at his blood-soaked shirt and the flesh that stains his body.

"Clarke. _Clarke_." He catches her fingers and holds them in his grasp. "It's not mine, okay? It's not mine."

"Who's is it?"

He just stares at her.

Her heart hammers dangerously inside her chest, pulsing loud in her ears. Bellamy says something, but she can't hear him, can't feel anything but the pressure on her skin as he gently shakes her shoulders.

She see's the stretcher being pushed into the doors of the medical unit then, a lying corpse wounded tightly in the body bag. There's a shriek as a nurse, Monroe, notices the dark hair and brown eyes of the woman's face.

The dead woman's face.

Maya's face.

Clarke feels her knees hit the floor, and she screams, screams and screams until her voice becomes muffled by Bellamy's shirt.

* * *

ix.

Maya doesn't have a gravesite, so Clarke makes her one.

She digs a hole into the ground where Maya first taught her how to grow a garden. She rips the flowers and plants deep from the soil, resting them gently on the wooden cross that Bellamy was able to piece together.

"It's beautiful," Octavia tells her.

And that night, she tells her again that it's beautiful, and that Maya wouldn't want her to be upset. She tells her because she's worried, because she already recognizes the familiar look of defeat in Clarke's unrested eyes.

* * *

x.

Clarke doesn't sleep for days.

 _Can't_ sleep. Not even when she tries.

She sits on the porch steps of her and Octavia's cabin, her fingers pressed tightly together. The moon is slowly lowering behind the wall, signalling another day, another night without sleep.

Bellamy shifts beside her, sighing.

She hasn't seen him in a week, the military force constantly training after Maya and Finn's death. He was returning from a mission when he noticed her on the porch, and he sat with her, not speaking, not saying anything at all.

Until now.

He turns to her. "Say something."

She closes her eyes. It's been too long since she last heard his voice. His hands are battered with bruises as he rests them on his knees, and she envies him, wanting to feel a pain instead of the emptiness inside her.

Clarke looks at her lap. "Like what?"

"Anything," he pleads.

She sighs, glancing at him, regarding his soft expression. He's always been better at hiding his emotions than her, but she can see it now, see the desperation lined his forehead.

"Talk to me about Finn," she whispers.

Bellamy's eyes widen slightly, and he exhales, dropping his gaze to the ground. She can see the tension in his body begin to form, and his fingers curl inwardly against the edge of the porch steps, nails hard on the wood.

Clarke doesn't touch him, doesn't ask him if he's okay. Just waits.

"There was an explosion." His words are broken, singular. "A broken band sliced his left leg off, and I couldn't stop the bleeding." He looks at her then, and his eyes are rimmed with grief. "He asked me to kill him. And I did."

She swallows thickly, nodding. "I know."

Of course she knew. She knew it from the moment he told he was dead, from the way his soft gaze turned hard and distant with the movement of his lips. She knows him. She doesn't want to, and it terrifies her, but she knows how he works.

And he knows her too. That's why, when she speaks her next words, they don't even surprise him, don't even make him flinch.

"I killed my father."

She's never said them aloud before. Not even to herself.

"He left me to get food, and when he came back, I thought he was someone else," she says lowly, the rays of sunlight beginning to rise from the mountains. "And I shot him. He bled out in two hours."

She swallows at the build up of tears in the back of her throat. The revelation feels heavy on her tongue, light in her heart, and when she closes her eyes, she expects to see her father's lifeless image surfacing her vision. But she doesn't. She see's nothing.

Bellamy looks at her contently. "We all have demons, Clarke. And we all have to learn how to live with them."

Clarke turns to him, her eyes swollen with unshed tears. She stares at him, this boy, this 21-year-old _man_ , more mature and wise than other man she knows. Or knew. Her father was very wise as well.

She rubs her palm against the wetness on her cheek. "Will you help me?"

"Yeah." He nods, smiling. "I'll help you."

She sniffles, and when the sun shines bright above them, she allows herself to feel. And it hurts. She feels for Maya, for her father, for Finn and all the others who perished along with humanity. She feels everything, and then, everything doesn't feel as heavy.

She sleeps for the first time that night, no images of her dead father.

* * *

xi.

On the six month anniversary of Maya's death, she visits the gravesite.

Bellamy is there when she approaches it, his hands crossed across his chest as he stands above the soil. He's in his military uniform, his clothes stained with dirt from the mission he recently returned from.

Clarke smiles. A welcoming sight.

She notices it then, the additional lump of soil above Maya's grave. Seeds, Maya's seeds, the seeds and plants she used to teach Clarke how to garden, line the ground surrounding the gravesite, like sprinkles on a cake, like stars in the sky.

She doesn't ask him if he did. She already knows he did.

She only asks him why.

"Because she deserves something special," he tells her after she wraps her arm around his neck. "And so do you."

Clarke only hugs him tighter, the smell of flower and fresh soil in the air.

* * *

xii.

She's in the medical unit when she hears the first explosion.

Clarke glances from her papers on her desk, the white nurses outfit held tightly around her. The walls shake, the ground vibrating, and she hears a ringing her ears, a pounding in her head that doesn't stop, not even when the second explosion occurs.

Monroe looks at her from across the medical unit. "What was - "

The entrance doors burst open, and a warmth enters the building despite the cold night. A man enters, a man she doesn't recognize, and she catches a glimpse of the fire burning beyond the front doors and the blood stains on his shirt before he raises his gun.

And aims it at Monroe.

"No - "

He pulls the trigger, and Monroe collapses to her knees, a bullet in her forehead.

Clarke screams as the blood splatters against the white walls, covering the surface in a dark red. The Other stares at her and lowers his gun, pulling a long knife from his belt as he stalks towards her.

There's another explosion, and more gunfire outside, and Clarke reaches for the scissors laying on her desk.

The Other yells as he surges forward, his arms raised with the knife above his head. His eyes are crazed, wild, and she remembers what it was like when she was sixteen and alone, when she had to kill or be killed.

The Other lowers the knife towards her, and she rushes into him, stabbing the scissors into the side of his neck.

He gasps. Loud. The air sucking from his lungs as she pulls the weapon from his flesh, blood squirting onto her face and covering her in death. His knife drops to the floor as his muscles loosen, and then there's a cough, and a gurgle, and he falls to his knees in front of her.

He's dying, he is, but she doesn't let him die gently.

Clarke screams as she pushes him further onto the ground, his skull cracking against the tiles. Her lips taste like blood, like a different world, and she sits above him, her arms rising and falling as she continues to stab him.

And stab him and stab him. He's everywhere. They're everywhere.

"Oh, my God."

The voice seems far away, surprised, yet the fear in it's tone unfamiliar. Clarke glances from the Other's corpse to the two people standing in the hallway, their expressions masked with desperation.

She notices Octavia, her hands cupped to her mouth in horror, but Bellamy only stares at her. His arms are raised with his gun in his grasp, and he drops the weapon to the floor, stumbling along the blood-stained tiles towards her.

"Clarke." He lowers onto his knees beside her and reaches forward, cradling her face. " _Clarke_."

She glares at him. He looks different, his features battered with bruises and cuts she doesn't recognize, and she knows they're recent, knows that the war outside is not over. The scissors leave her grip as Octavia takes them from her, and she shakes, everything starts to shake.

She closes her eyes. "I'm sorry."

Bellamy shakes his head, noticing the grief in her eyes. "It's okay," he whispers, choking on it's emotion. His thumbs stroke her cheeks, padding through the blood on her skin. "You did what you had to. It's okay."

Gunshots echo from the open doors, and Octavia looks out one of the windows, tapping her foot impatiently.

"We have to hurry," she hisses.

Bellamy nods. He wraps his arm around Clarke's waist, lifting her from the ground. His palms are soft as he runs them along the top of her arms and grips her shoulders, steadying her.

"There's been an ambush," Octavia informs her as she presses a cloth to her face and rubs at the stains. "Kane and two squads are trying to keep them out, but we need to get the civilians out of danger first before every man is used to fight."

Clarke's eyes widen, and she turns to Bellamy. "Don't - "

"You need to get the women and children to the underground tunnel," he tells her. He steps away from her, swallowing thickly as he picks his gun up from the floor. "You and Octavia need to go now. Round them up."

Clarke stares at him. "No."

" _Clarke_."

There's another explosion, and then a chorus of screaming citizens. Octavia rolls the cloth in her fist and throws it onto the ground, pulling on Clarke's arm. But she doesn't move, doesn't even wince. Only looks at _him_.

"Clarke!" Octavia cries out, staring at the wounded people outside. "Come on!"

She turns to Octavia, seeing the desperation in her gaze as she tugs on her wrist. Her head feels dizzy, and so does her neck, but her heart, her heart hurts more than anything right now. It stings more than any cut.

Clarke releases a shuddering breath. "Bell - "

"I know," he say, his eyes dark.

 _He knows_. She wants to tell him everything, wants to tell him what she should said months ago, _years_ ago. But he knows. He knows and so she doesn't tell him, she _shows_ him.

Clarke steps forward, gripping his face and pressing her lips against his.

He responds almost immediately, as if he was expecting it, or thinking about. His mouth is hard on hers, and he curls a fist into her hair, deepening the desperation between them before pulling away.

Clarke whimpers, leaning her forehead against his. "Don't die."

And then there's more explosions, more screaming and gunshots, and Clarke follows Octavia out of the medical unit, away from Monroe's corpse and Bellamy's hard expression.

And into the danger within the walls.

* * *

xiii.

The ambush ends six hours after it begins.

And in those six hours, those terrifying and destructive six hours, the Ark collapsed. 189 people were killed, 20 of them women, 54 of them children. The women and children that Clarke and Octavia tried to save.

But they didn't. Couldn't.

The civilians were taken from their protection as they gathered them in the tunnels, were murdered in front of them, in front of their children and their parents and their siblings. They were shot, or stabbed. Ripped from each side of their body.

Clarke groans as she lifts another body onto the trauma bed. Her hands are stained with blood and dirt, the remaining crimson of the Other's flesh deep in her skin. She's tired, hair pulled tightly behind her, and she sighs deeply.

"Dr. Griffin," the child in her arms whispers.

Clarke looks at her. "What is it?"

The child grimaces, her small bones weak as she raises her arm towards the entrance. The medical unit is silent despite the numbing screams of mothers as their told their son did not survive. Clarke swallows thickly, turning towards the direction of the child's gesture.

And then she see's him.

" _Bellamy_ ," she cries.

He notices her then, his eyes landing on hers as he draws away from Octavia's embrace. There's an open wound slashed along his shoulder and multiple scars on his hands, but he's here, and he's alive, and he's _here._

Clarke shudders, breathing his name as she runs towards him. She pushes through the crowd of patients in the medical unit, and then she hears her name being called, and she runs harder, faster, crying in relief when she reaches him and feels his arms wrap around her.

She buries her face in the crook of his shoulder, sobbing.

"Oh, thank God," she whispers, clutching him close to her. "Thank God, thank _God_."

He holds her tightly, pressing warm kisses to the top of her head, to the bruise under her jaw. He feels so cold under her touch, and she pulls away, running her fingers down his cheeks.

"We're okay," she tells him.

"Yeah." He nods, touching his forehead to hers. "We'll be okay."

* * *

xiv.

The days get longer as they rebuilt the Ark, but they're still breathing.

She spends most of her time at the medical unit, curing the ill and making the dying comfortable. She rarely see's Bellamy, or Octavia, their services constantly needed as they repair the camp.

They lost many things. Many people. But she still has them.

"You're my sister, O," she tells Octavia one night in the darkness of their cabin. "We'll be okay."

Octavia grins, resting her head on Clarke's pillow. "We'll be okay."

* * *

xv.

Weeks later, Bellamy injuries himself during a training session.

After Kane was killed in the ambush attack, a new sergeant was assigned to the military base. They call him 'Numbers', or at least Murphy does, due to the amount of casualties he claims during missions, and the pride he has when he does.

But his real name is 'Pike'. Though Bellamy mostly calls him 'asshole'.

And, apparently, 'asshole' punched him in the face during a warmup.

He winces as she threads the string through the open wound on his forehead, his hands gripping the edge of the table. She's sitting on his counter in the kitchen of his cabin, her legs hovering his hips as he stands between them.

"Almost done," she murmurs.

She shifts closer to the edge, her chest pressing against his. She leans into him, her fingers curling his hair to steady his head, filling in the final gap of his wound and cutting the remaining string from his stitches.

Just like Maya taught her.

"There," she whispers, smoothing her palm over his skin. "Perfect."

He looks at her. "Thanks."

Clarke nods. She sets the first-aid kit on the counter beside her, removing her hands from his hair and placing them by her sides. His face is close to hers, close enough to count his freckles, and she exhales at the proximity.

"How have you been?" she asks him.

"I've seen better days." His breath is hot on her skin. "I've seen worse."

She closes her eyes. "Yeah."

The cabin is silent around them, though she can hear the cackling of the flames at his fireplace. The heat radiates from the fire, from his skin, and she breathes him in, the familiar warmth and protection, the craved feelings of his arms around hers.

Of his lips on hers.

They don't talk about it, don't even mention it happening. But she thinks about it. God, does she think about it. She hasn't felt them in weeks, and even when she did, it was a small peck, a ghost of a kiss that limits her from experiencing the real taste of his body.

But it still changed her. It still changed them.

"What are you thinking about?"

Clarke can hear the desperation in his voice, hidden under layers of his tone. She opens her eyes, and he's closer to her than she remembered, his hands hovering her thighs as he gazes at her in the darkness.

"You," she tells him, not afraid. Not anymore. "Always you."

Bellamy swallows thickly. "Clarke."

She shakes her head. Her hands grip his shoulders, and she stares at him, at the softness of his features, the complexities of his face. She's known him since she was sixteen, for three years of her life. He found her, cold and alone, and she found him, too.

They found each other. In a world where everything is lost.

"I didn't think I was going to see you again, did you know that?" Her words are rushed, months of confessions on the tip of her tongue. "When you left to fight in the ambush, I didn't think you were coming back."

His gaze drops to her lips. "But I did."

"Yeah. You did." She grabs his face and smiles. "Thank God you did."

And when she kisses him this time, it isn't like before, when they were each on the brink of death and chaos. It isn't like before, when their lips were pressed together for a brief moment before being torn apart.

No. This kiss is different. This kiss is passionate and loving, and he claims her, opening her mouth and coaxing her tongue as he tangles his hands in her hair. She whimpers, wrapping her legs around his waist and pulling him in.

"Clarke," he breathes, and it's everything.

He wraps his hands around her thighs, pulling her to the edge of the counter. She gasps as he lifts her from the surface, his fingers digging into her skin as he stumbles towards the bed, lowering her onto the mattress.

Bellamy pulls his shirt over his head and positions himself between her legs.

He exhales sharply as he looks down at her. "Have you ever . . . "

Clarke nods and pecks his lips. "Yes."

"Doesn't matter." He peppers kisses along her exposed chest, and she arches into him. "I'm taking as long as I want loving you."

And he does. He takes her gentle, long, thrusting into her painfully slow before making her scream his name and bite down on his bare shoulder. Her head feels dizzy as her hips meet his with each pump, and he feels so good, everything about him feels right.

This is right. The world is ending, but she loves him, and he loves her, and this is right.

They're okay for a long time after that, even with Maya gone, and Finn and Kane and her father. They lose more. They lose Murphy and Atom, but then Octavia finds a man named Lincoln, and they become okay again.

It's a long cycle, the cycle of this life. Death is everywhere, but so is love, so is he, and it comforts her more than anything being in his arms, being on his mind, being inside him.

"The world ended, and I found you," he tells her one night as they lay breathless on the bed. "Funny, isn't it? Since that's the moment my world began."

The humans became strong again, as more and more military camps such as the Ark are built around the world. The Others still walk amongst them, but the humans are not extinct, and neither is their home.

Home. Clarke forgot what that felt like.

Until he found her. And now her home is not a place, but a person.

It's Bellamy.

* * *

 _Alright guys! That's the end of this story, which I actually had a lot of fun writing. I know it's short, but I hope you guys still enjoyed it. I love the relationship between Bellamy and Clarke in this one, and I hope you did, too._

 _Also, I'm not complaining, but I've noticed a lot of absent comments on my story 'Friends (With Benefits)'. Not that I care all about 'praise' and 'good reviews', but it just kind of makes me feel like you guys aren't really into the story. So if you aren't, let me know, and maybe I could continue with Nowhere Found instead!_

 _Hope you had a great weekend, xo._


End file.
